The Ever-Improving Forecast For This Parade Day

The weather in Newport, RI was supposed to be horrible this Saturday.

There is little that can tell you about the variability of New England weather in March like the long-term forecast for Newport’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. That date appears 10, 12…15 days out (depending on the weather service you’re using) and most people in Newport (along with everyone else even thinking of attending the parade) become fixated on that forecast.

There’s an old saying, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait five minutes.” Things can, and do, change in a hurry. That means the initial prediction is only there to establish a baseline. If it says it’s going to be beautiful, that’s nice…but it’s only really opening you up for disappointment. If the prediction is for terrible weather, then it sucks…but you might be pleasantly surprised.

The reason that weather is so important for parade is that there is no rain date. So many of the bands participating in the parade are fully scheduled through the whole month of March that trying to shift the parade a day is impossible. That means that whatever the weather may throw at us, we’ll have to grin and bear it.

Back on February 29th, “Leap Day”, this was the forecast we were looking at…

That is not the kind of weather we’d look forward to. Fortunately, by Friday, March 4th, things looked like they might be improving, at least in terms of precipitation.

Now, as we write this, things keep getting better. It’s going to be a whole lot sunnier and warmer (though a little windier) than we could have hoped given that initial forecast two weeks ago!

As Parade Day weather goes, we’ll toss this forecast a solid B. It’s not going to be one of those crazy beautiful 70º days that we get every few years, but it’s not going to be 33º with freezing rain like we’ve also experienced. Expect spots with outdoor patios like O’Brien’s and @The Deck to be pretty crowded.

How did this happen? Well, we’re not sure if the City diverted the funds it was talking about putting into a snow melter last year into a Weather Dominator or if global warming is working to our advantage for once, but we’ll take it!